Reddit St. Patrick's Day

At the end of November, I posted about joining Reddit Gifts to do the yearly Secret Santa Christmas exchange.  Then in early December, I followed up with a post talking about what I sent to my giftee.

You'll notice, there was no follow up regarding what I got.

Whomp, whomp.

Best I can tell, my package got stuck in US customs during the government shutdown, and hasn't moved an inch since.  While I haven't lost all hope of getting my gift, the stark reality is that if the package has a tracking number and hasn't moved since January 13th ... well, I'd assume a month and a half later it's likely gone for good.

Sad.

Of course, this didn't prevent me from having more fun in the Christmas exchange, as I volunteered to be a rematcher for someone who got similarly shafted ... be it because their package was lost in shipping, or there was just nothing sent to begin with ... either way, I was rematched with a parter in California the second time around.  He wrote a very nice thank you note, including a mention that his family kind of skipped Christmas this year, and how my gift made him feel like he wasn't left out.

Oh the feels.

In my participation of these exchanges, what I've come to learn about most of the people who do Reddit Gifts (who I've been matched to or read about, anyway) is this - usually, participants have a reason why they're in these exchanges.  And more often than not, it boils down to them either being (A) lonely / having no one in their life who cares enough to give them gifts, or (B) going through some trouble in life that they need a diversion from and random gifting gives them a new venue of happiness to pursue while they work through their situation.

Given that I participate just for the fun of gifting, and feeling good about being able to make a difference in someone else's life ... well, I'm not too upset that I didn't get my exchange gift for Christmas.  Let's just leave it at that.

So, knowing that I had fun regardless of the outcome, I decided to sign up for a new Reddit Gifts exchange a little over a week ago.

Here were my options:

Knowing my ... proclivities ... can you guess which one I signed up for?

LOL!  Here's a hint:

Obviously if there's a holiday with costuming and festive decor involved, you know I've got to be a part of it ... right?!

So on February 19th, I was assigned my partner.  And she seemed like a very nice person:

Bahahaha.  Well, I'm sure she is a nice person ... just don't try to Google her Reddit user name at work ... on an office computer ... using the company's internet filters.

Damn it that I try to be such a thoughtful and through gift giver, because turns out I was matched to someone who uses her assets in a very unique way that I'm way too modest to ever do myself.

That's a nice way of saying my partner is a BBW porn star.

Me, closing my internet browser at work:

Hahahahah - whoops!!

Since I like to try to find the similarities between myself and my giftee in these exchanges, rather than focus on our obviously vast differences ... I was happy to find that my partner for this exchange surprisingly enjoys crafting and creating things much like I do.  Building off that, I decided to invest an ungodly amount of time into a mini cross stitch (I think I was about 12 hours in when all was said and done).

And then I paired it with a smattering of St. Pat's items that she could wear ... well, doing whatever it is she does.

Since I feel like I can never send one of these gifts without including a personal note, I wrote a letter telling a little about myself and a little about why I chose what I did ... and then I packed it up with a cute label and shipped it off:

And now ... I wait for it to arrive later this week.

Fingers crossed they like it!

Valentines Day 2019

Ahhh ... Valentine's Day.  A holiday meant for love and chocolate and cheesy puns that somehow relate to the holiday at hand.

Psh, like I can talk ... since that banana pun was my son's Valentine giveaway last year.  Haha!

Well, given that opening, I suppose you know what time it is!!

Let's get right into what my son brought to "school" this year as his Valentine's Day giveaway item:

Yep, another fruit pun.  I guess I can't really help it, though.

First of all, you know I hate gifting candy at holidays like this.  It's already bad enough that everyone ends up with the crappy sugary stuff like candy hearts, tiny boxes of Nerds, bad chocolate poured in the shape of hearts and lips, or those weird red suckers that try to pretend they're Jolly Ranchers when they're not.

But second of all, I hate to waste money on some plastic novelty toy that will just end up broken and in a landfill before the day is done.

So ... an apple.  Makes 100% sense at Valentine's Day, right?  Not really, I suppose.  Which means I'm sure you're asking: how did this all come to be?

Well, right around Christmas, I started working with Shelly at Shell's Creations to whip up a bushel or so of apples.  (Is 15 apples enough to make a bushel?  I don't even know!)  Being that my son so loved bananas last year, I figured the natural progression from a banana would be an apple.

And much like last year, I figured that this pretend food item would fit well into any child's existing play kitchen and actually become a usable toy worthy of escaping the landfill a day or two after Valentine's Day has passed (or if said child didn't have a play kitchen, I figured they could still have imaginative play with just a single piece of fruit.  Why not?!)

After a little back and forth with Shelly, who was ever so sweet and friendly, I had a prototype approved ... complete with a gift tag.  Then, much to my amazement ... within a matter of a few weeks later, I had these photos in my inbox:

Bing - bang - boom!  Shelly shipped, the apples are already pre-tagged ... I'm done, right?!

Well ... if you read my previous post about Lunar New Year, you'll already know that there were some communication errors between my son's daycare staff and me regarding class headcount.  On February 1st, I found out - SURPRISE - my son's age group class segment was 14 kids, but the entire preschool room comes together for parties, and that's 25 kids.

Knowing that there was no way Shelly could crochet another 10 apples and get them shipped from Illinois to me within one week's time, I called my sister's etsy shop on speed dial for some help ASAP.  (I had avoided bothering her with this project up to this point, as I knew she was busy transitioning to a new job and various family things over the holidays).

Since I had found the original apple crochet pattern for Shelly, I showed my sister that same pattern, and within 3-4 days I had the apples I was short.  Phew!  Thanks seester!!

With the apple crisis averted, it was time to refocus on organizing the last half of my son's Valentine's Day gifting - teacher presents!!  Since he enjoyed helping me wrap his teacher's gifts for Lunar New Year, I recruited his help stuffing glittery heart purses with lip balms, face masks, and fuzzy key chains (which he was quite mad about giving up, btw):

Then he helped me hold ribbons while I wrapped the bags in tissues, and it all came together to look a little something like this:

With everything packed up the night before, my son seemed excited for his upcoming party.  But I can't help to admit: for several days previous, I was feeling very guilty.

You see, my son is at a tipping point where he is transitioning from a baby (where adults made all his decisions for him) to a child (where he should have some flexibility to make some decisions for himself).  In beginning to plan his apple Valentine, it never occurred to me that I should take him shopping and let him pick his Valentine himself.

It wasn't until about a week or so ago that I was talking to a friend of mine who's son was born the week after mine.  She mentioned that he wanted to pick out a Lightening McQueen cake for his birthday ... and then I was like:

But at that point, the apples were already a done deal, and I didn't want to let all that handiwork go to waste.

Thankfully, my son still loves his play kitchen, so he was pretty excited when he saw the apples the night before.  And I knew he was very excited to give them out the next day ... as evidence to him singing "apples, apples, apples" the entire time he got dressed to go in the morning, and the ENTIRE ride in as well.

Lucky for me, my husband was on driving duty that morning.  Heh!

Hope you had a great Valentine's Day!!

The Year of the Pig - 2019

Since I'm behind on my extra mom recaps ... today you get to hear about Chinese New Year; on Valentine's Day no less.  Enjoy!!

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As I said last year ... it's no secret that I'm a Chinese New Year enthusiast.  I mean ... you don't study Chinese language from the age of 12 without getting a little joy out of celebrating what is now more commonly known as the Lunar New Year.

Me, age 17, preforming YangGui Fei Zui Jiu in TianJin, China.

Basically, I'm one of the hottest consorts of Chinese history, 

but I have recently lost favor with the Emperor, and am debating suicide.  

LOL!  So not me in real life.

So, what's an extra mom like me to do in the year of the pig?  Well ... let me tell you!

First, let's talk about recycling.  I'm eco friendly like that.  LOL!  Last year, I mentioned I had purchased these:

 

Unfortunately, I didn't get to re-use these dress up pieces this year, as I found out last second that my son's new classroom - he's moved up to the preschooler room, hooray! - is much more than 12 kids, and I only had 12 hats and a handful of small sized dresses.  Darn!  (In case you'd like to buy them yourself, here's the link for mandarin hats and dresses.) 

Had I known sooner about this head count change, I may have opted to buy a few more hats ... but a miscommunication left me thinking he had 14 kids in his group, when the actual number was 25.  If you compound a 10 hat increase with an additional need to purchase more take home treasures, etc ... well ... I wasn't really in the mood to go buy more hats.  Maybe next year, kids!

Step two in recycling from 2018 - I once again sent a kid friendly book about the New Year that my son's teachers could read in class:

Bringing in the New Year

A book about traditional celebration practices by Grace Lin

Step three in recycling from 2018 - coloring sheets!  I did, however, give this a year appropriate refresh:

Ok, recycling aside, let's talk the good stuff ... PRESENTS!  Because, what is a holiday celebration without a gift?!

Last year, you may recall, I purchased a set of 24 of these gift bags for $3.99:

Since that seller has totally sold out, and doesn't appear to be relisting on Amazon any time soon, I decided to give these bags a shot instead:

Since these gift bags were for the kids, inside went a zodiac animal appropriate finger puppet just like last year:

And for the teachers, an assortment of adult appropriate goodies - one each of a little stone pig, a scarf (design A, design B) and a chocolate zodiac gold coin from World Market:

I had originally purchased some zippered coin pouches for the teachers to put their gifts in, but when it came down to time to wrap the presents ... whoops!  The scarves were so surprisingly huge that they didn't fit.  Luckily I had some red tissue and gold foil mylar I could substitute instead.  That actually worked out well, because my son enjoyed helping me place the gifts on the tissue, and handing me ribbons to tie the parcels shut.

Oh!  One last touch.  Each of the gifts was cinched shut with a tag applied outside, just for extra "informational" measure.

The end result looked a little like this:

So there you have it.  Another year of Lunar celebrations on the books.  

And yes, I may have already started shopping for 2020 inspo ... I mean, I am extra, after all!

Moby's Top Fan

So a few days ago, maybe over the past weekend, I had an ... interesting, shall we say ... experience.

Let's dial it back for a second.  A few details to note.

(1)  If you read this blog with any regularity, or know me at all, you know I'm very open to the ideas of vegetarianism and veganism.  You then also know that I opt to practice both at various times throughout my week, on a regular basis, but am not committed to either as a full time lifestyle.

(2)  Additionally, per point 1 above, you likely know I enjoy music.  A lot.  And you know I enjoy said music at an extremely varied taste level ... we're talking Metallica to Migos to Rusted Root to Beatles to Britney Spears to Outkast and everything in between.  (Just no country, please!!!)

(3)  This fact many likely don't know: I follow various musical artists on Facebook. 

Ok, the above gets you up to speed enough that this story will now make sense.  Let's get back on track.

So whatever day it was within the last few days, Moby...  Yes, THE Moby, who at one point in time used to be a relevant musical artist ... Oh, was that mean?  Because to me it ALL seems like truth in advertising ...

Anyway, Moby published on Facebook one of his usual vegan, meant to be inflammatory, Facebook posts. 

Most days I simply ignore when he does that crap, letting it just filter through my Facebook feed, slowly allowing whatever stupidity was spewed be buried from existence by newer and newer feed posts. 

But for whatever reason, that day, I didn't want to just let it go. 

Putting aside the fact that a man made a somewhat derogatory comment about a woman's natural menstrual cycle ... which he CLEARLY doesn't even understand (because egg creation and menstruation are two entirely different processes) ... I couldn't quite stomach the fact that someone who presents themselves as such a scientifically educated individual was posting something that was so fundamentally scientifically incorrect.

For those of you who don't understand the menstrual cycle, I will just say this: creating or laying an egg is part of ovulation.  Ovulation is NOT menstruation.  That's as gross as I'll get on this public forum.  The end.

Anyway.

So I made a comment.

And like all things on the internet, we all held hands afterwards, sang koom-bye-ya, and hugged.

Hahahaha, yeah right.

Of course a vegan uprising ensued.  Not just directly at me, but throughout the entire comment thread. 

Yet - much to my surprise, some of the vegans were of a similar mind set to me.  They actually agreed that Moby's statement was in poor taste.  Though some were looking at it from more of a misogyny/shaming aspect, rather than from a scientific accuracy aspect, I still appreciated their thoughts on the matter.  Because I did agree - part of what rubbed me wrong about the post was a man calling something shameful because it's related to a woman's menstrual cycle.

Not wanting to be any further a part of the conversation, I simply unfollowed the post. 

And then, I thought ... you know, Moby hasn't ever really published any kind of usable content for me on Facebook - why exactly is it that I continue to allow his self righteousness onto my stream?  So I unfollowed him, unliked his page, and removed myself from his "follower" army.

Because, I figured ... even if I am only just one person ... why continue to let my number add to his reputation on Facebook?  Or anywhere else, for that matter.

So from my perspective, book closed.  I had pretty much forgotten about it in fact.

Until today.

Hahahaha. 

OMG.  I laughed for a good, long time about that one.

Being curious, naturally, I went back to the post to see what drove this.  I knew it was only due to that post, because I NEVER comment on Moby's stuff.

Sure enough, look at all that love.  LOL!  And not a single angry face to boot!

Sigh.  Sometimes there IS good in the world.

So I thought about it for awhile.  Even though I'm no longer a follower of Moby, I decided to gracefully accept.

Because what's even funnier than getting a badge?  Owning said badge when you're not even a Moby fan.  LOL!!!!